[vox-tech] bootable partition question

[Mark K. Kim]

On Mon, 29 Jul 2002, Peter Jay Salzman wrote:

> i'm pretty sure that's correct, but what i'd like to know is, when
> lilo is on the MBR, does the bootable flag become meaningless?

I think so.

> cfdisk seems to allow you to create multiple bootable partitions (of
> course, i didn't try writing that to disk.  maybe cfdisk would pop up an
> error if i did.)

The partition table has a field that tells whether a primary partition is
the boot partition or not.  If you set only one of the four possible
primary partitions as the bootable partition, things are cool; if you set
more than one or none, then the system won't boot if you keep the default
boot program in the MBR.  Things shouldn't matter if you install a boot
loader like LILO over the MBR, though.

<opinion repeatlevel=infinity>
But as I always recommend, leave the MBR alone as other OSes (Windows,
OS/2, etc.) will write over it like it were a teacher grading your quiz.
Instead, install LILO on the Linux partition's boot area and set the boot
flag to the partition whenever possible!  That way, if something ever
resets the MBR and the boot flag, you can use whatever program that's
available on that OS to set the boot flags back the way they were.
</opinion>

-Mark

--
Mark K. Kim
http://www.cbreak.org/
PGP key available upon request.